


Napoleon, Nietzsche & TFP

by Tendergingergirl



Series: Nietzsche, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 22:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tendergingergirl/pseuds/Tendergingergirl
Summary: December 16, 2017This meta digs into the history of how Sherlock Holmes was created, including the contributions of Edgar Allen Poe and Nietzsche.





	Napoleon, Nietzsche & TFP

 

##  _A Study In Holmesian Iconoclasm: Masks & Images P.2_

This is the final part of a series that looked into the canon story _The Six Napoleons_ , resulting in[ **mary-resurrects-lucretia**](https://tendergingergirl.tumblr.com/post/167467871816/mary-resurrects-lucretia) & [**sherlock-on-the-ocean-when-neitzsche-wept**](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fsherlock-on-the-ocean-when-neitzsche-wept&t=Y2VkNzdhNDVlOTE2MGM4M2NmOGIwYmYxMTk1MDg0NmVhODc3YmRiMSxwalVCSWt6aA%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168615135421%2Fnapoleon-nietzsche-tfp&m=1). In the story, someone is running around, smashing Napoleon busts. Strange enough, but even more so when you find out that this has all happened before. Arthur Conan Doyle was masterful, it seems, at embedding real-life people and true tales of History in the Holmes stories. Iconoclasm is the social belief in the importance of the destruction of usually religious icons and other images or monuments, most frequently for religious or political reasons…In Political and revolutionary iconoclasm, revolutions, and changes of regime, whether through uprising of the local population, foreign invasion, or a combination of both, are often accompanied by the public destruction of statues and monuments identified with the previous regime.

**_Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin; the creative and the resolvent.“_ Poe‘s explicit reference to the double‘ directly intertwines with the theme of duality which resonates throughout the Gothic novel and the Romantic Movement in  
nineteenth century fiction; this paradigm is evident in texts such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s Faust, Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein…This motif has been extensively examined by scholars and has been defined using numerous but vague classifications which include the fictional double‘, the evil twin‘, the alter ego‘, the antithetical self‘, the fragmentation of self into dual‘ and the twin soul‘. ** **Dupin reproaches the Prefect of the Parisian police for being too cunning to be profound‘,**

**_(which mirrors the game of chess where what is complex is mistaken for what is profound‘. The detective, also, rebukes the Prefect‘s wisdom‘ for being all head and no body‘ which relates to the detective‘s earlier supposition that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic‘ The Prefect‘s reasoning is too fanciful‘ to be successful.  It is through the combined use of both aspects of the Bi Part Soul‘, the head‘ and the body‘ and their associated faculties of the imagination and reason, that the detective was able to outwit his opponent.)_ **

**Duality is implicit in the structure and characterization of The Murders in the Rue Morgue‘.  It is visible in the tale‘s twin plot, the divided self which is the narrator and Dupin, the doubling of the criminals, victims and detective and most prominently the detective‘s creative and resolvent‘ Bi-Part Soul‘.  Dupin‘s dual psychology is associated with moral ambiguity and a blurring of boundaries which, consequently, has shaped a compelling psychosomatic template for a genre of multifaceted and complex detective protagonists. Holmes‘ inherent dualism is summarised by Iain Sinclair and Ed Glinert who state that:  
   
Holmes is the classically divided man that the age required: alchemist and  
rigorous experimenter, furious walker and definitive slacker, athlete and dope fiend.  He could, as the mood took him, be Trappist or motor mouth … Holmes is forever lurching between incompatible polarities. From the beginning Holmes was a double figure, first in himself as the mixture of scientist and poet and even more significantly in the double figure of Sherlock Holmes Doctor Watson‘.  
Conan Doyle‘s implicit doubling of Poe‘s detective trilogy extends further; like Dupin who doubles the criminals in The Murders in the Rue Morgue‘ and the thief Minister D. in The Purloined Letter‘, Holmes represents a doppelgänger for his arch nemesis, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.  Moriarty only directly appears in two of the sixty Holmes accounts; in the short story The Final Problem‘ and the novella The Valley of Fear, though he is mentioned in a selection of the other narratives. In these two accounts we learn that Moriarty shares a number of common characteristics with Holmes. He is of similar physical appearance, has a phenomenal mathematical faculty‘, is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker‘ and a scientific criminal‘ Moriarty conforms to the same Bi-Part‘ mould as the detectives Holmes and Dupin; he is both reasoned and artistic. In The Final Problem‘ Holmes refers to Moriarty as the organiser of half that is evil. Moriarty could characterize an inversion of the values embodied by Holmes‘ and, as a result, the criminal represents the detective‘s doppelgänger who is equipped with an ** **identical skill set but motivated by an evil purpose.”**

##  **Context: Paralleling the Works of Nietzsche and Sherlock**

_Out of the night that covers me,_  
Black as the pit from pole to pole,  
I thank whatever gods may be  
For my unconquerable soul.

##  **Thus Spake Zarathustra: Sherlock On The Ocean:**

_“The above piece was written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley. Perhaps most famous is Henley’s closing statement: “I am the master of my fate:/I am the captain of my soul.” The poem is a declaration of the triumph of the human spirit - the refusal to bend to a universe Henley called “a place of wrath and tears. Holmes was an unprecedented sort of hero. Emerging from a culture enthralled by scientific progress, he was a superhero who relied almost entirely on his powers of deduction…Holmes was and is the sensationalized personification of Henley’s captain of the soul. His powers of deduction are presented as the triumph of reason, a triumph open to all of humanity if we’d only try a little harder. In this way, Sherlock Holmes is Nietzsche’s “superman” (a term coined in_ [ _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ ](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fwork%2Fquotes%2F196327-also-sprach-zarathustra-ein-buch-f-r-alle-und-keinen&t=YzgyZWNkN2U2NDU2YmU0MmEzMTAwNTRlZDA1OWI5NGVlZWE4MWE3MSxmR0FrMmVqYQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168248650266%2Fsherlock-on-the-ocean-when-neitzsche-wept&m=1) _, written a few years before A Study in Scarlet). He is the moral, observational and logical evolution of mankind._

_The Übermensch is Nietzsche’s concept of the ideal, and it can translate to overman, superman, above human, and probably some other things. The Übermensch doesn’t have incredible physical abilities. Instead, his power is mental and spiritual. The greatest power in the world, according to Nietzsche, is freedom, and I’m about to make a huge and tragic over-simplification of Nietzsche’s theory as to what that means. It is that complete human freedom is achieved by radically breaking with all forms of guilt, shame, and external authority. It combines many qualities of a completely naïve and fearless toddler with those of an experienced and wise elder.”_

**Sherlock: _Isn’t that…one of those Law things?_**

_“In the first or second episode a minor character calls him a sociopath, and the show really delves into the question of what actually makes Holmes and Moriarty (a really evil criminal who is as good at crime as Holmes is at solving crimes) different from each other aside from pure occupational interests. The sociopath comment was my first clue. Critics of Nietzsche’s philosophy have always contended that his Übermensch would really be a sociopath who just looks out for number one. What is useful in making the connection between Sherlock Holmes and Nietzsche’s work is that I think the Holmes series provides a picture into how the Übermensch doesn’t necessarily play out as a sociopath.“_

_"He can’t stand the boredom of the day to day, the absurd. And it is just like any good German existentialist to value present experience over the longevity of life. Furthermore, he is completely open about his habit with Dr. Watson, who is initially very concerned. His openness about it shows that Holmes gives no credibility to prescriptions other than his own as to what constitutes a good life._

_His passion happens to be for forensic science, or the “science of deduction,” as Holmes calls it. The key, though, is that he throws everything he has got into what he truly cares about, leaving no room for time wasters like social obligations, civic engagement, parties, etc. Dr. Watson even finds that Holmes isn’t aware that the Earth revolves around the sun, since it has no use for his forensic studies.”_

**_“There is an old illusion—it is called good and evil. Around soothsayers and astrologers hath hitherto revolved the orbit of this illusion._ **

**_Once did one believe in soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, "Everything is fate: thou shalt, for thou must!”_ **

**_Then again did one distrust all soothsayers and astrologers; and therefore did one believe, “Everything is freedom: thou canst, for thou willest!”_ **

_**O my brethren, concerning the stars and the future there hath hitherto been only illusion, and not knowledge; and therefore concerning good and evil there hath hitherto been only illusion and not knowledge!”** Thus Spake Zarathustra_

” _On Nietzsche: While most of his contemporaries looked on the late nineteenth century with unbridled optimism, confident in the progress of science and the rise of the German state, Nietzsche saw his age facing a fundamental crisis in values. With the rise of science, the Christian worldview no longer held a prominent explanatory role in people’s lives, a view Nietzsche captures in the phrase “God is dead.” However, science does not introduce a new set of values to replace the Christian values it displaces. Nietzsche rightly foresaw that people need to identify some source of meaning and value in their lives, and if they could not find it in science, they would turn to aggressive nationalism and other such salves. The last thing Nietzsche would have wanted was a return to traditional Christianity, however. Instead, he sought to find a way out of nihilism through the creative and willful affirmation of life.“_

##  **The Gay Science: Nietzsche’s first consideration of the idea of the**[ **eternal recurrence**](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FEternal_recurrence&t=YzZjMDMzYjg2MzhkMTkyNmVhYWU2MmQxZmY2YzNlNjRmMzIwNTZkMSxwalVCSWt6aA%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168615135421%2Fnapoleon-nietzsche-tfp&m=1)

_“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ […] Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”_

This was one of the themes of Shakespeare’s No Fear Sonnets 1-60, some of which have been found embedded and acted out in the show. [**59**](https://tendergingergirl.tumblr.com/post/165311444496/59-the-cycle-of-life) is heavy with this theme and found in The Six Thatchers. _“Not only does Nietzsche posit that the universe is recurring over infinite time and space, but that the different versions of events that have occurred in the past may at one point or another take place again, hence “all configurations that have previously existed on this earth must yet meet…” And with each version of events is hoping that some knowledge or awareness is gained to better the individual, hence “And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me and a woman will be born, just like Mary—only that it is hoped to be that the head of this man may contain a little less foolishness…”_

##  **The Antichrist, originally published in 1895**

**MARY:** Hm. Now you’d think we’d have noticed, when she was born.  
**JOHN:** Hm? Noticed what?  
**MARY:** The little 666 on her forehead.  
**JOHN:** Hmhmhm, that’s The Omen.  
**MARY:** (lifts her head to look at him with a frown, stays like that though John’s entire answer) So?  
**JOHN:** Well, you said it was like The Exorcist. **They’re two different things. You can’t be the Devil and the Antichrist.**

_“Nietzsche writes scathingly about Christianity, arguing that it is fundamentally opposed to life. In Christian morality, Nietzsche sees an attempt to deny all those characteristics that he associates with healthy life. The concept of sin makes us ashamed of our instincts and our sexuality, the concept of faith discourages our curiosity and natural skepticism, and the concept of pity encourages us to value and cherish weakness. Furthermore, Christian morality is based on the promise of an afterlife, leading Christians to devalue this life in favor of the beyond. Nietzsche argues that Christianity springs from resentment for life and those who enjoy it, and it seeks to overthrow health and strength with its life-denying ethic. As such, Nietzsche considers Christianity to be the hated enemy…_ _Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.”_

**Sherlock:** **_This hospital is full of people dying, doctor, why don’t you go and cry by their bedsides, see what good it does._ **

Nietzsche claimed that the Christian religion and its morality are based on imaginary fictions. Concept of morality is falsified. Morality is no longer an expression of life and growth. Instead, morality opposes life by presenting well–being as a dangerous temptation. Priestly agitators “… interpret all good fortune as a reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedience of God, for 'sin,’…The sacred book formulates the will of God and specifies what is to be given to the priests. Priests become parasites.”…All things of life are so ordered that the priest is _everywhere indispensable_ ; at all the natural events of life, at birth, marriage, sickness, death. Not to speak of 'sacrifice’ (meal–times)…Natural values become utterly valueless. The priest sanctifies and bestows all value. Disobedience of God (the priest) is 'sin.’ Subjection to God (the priest) is redemption. Priests use 'sin’ to gain and hold power. 

**Sherlock:**   ** _…And contrast is, after all, God’s own plan to enhance the beauty of his creation. Or it would be if God were not a ludicrous fantasy designed to provide a career opportunity for the family idiot._**

*Interesting footnote about the first part of this statement. Goethe, from whom Nietzche gets the word Ubermensch, apparently actually invented the Color Wheel. [**THIS**](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQnt7_GsDK8k&t=OTlkOTYyZWY0MDMzYzQyNGQ1NGNhMGFiZDQ4MjBlZjY0Y2NiYmZlYixwalVCSWt6aA%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168615135421%2Fnapoleon-nietzsche-tfp&m=1) video shows how he used light, shadow and a color to enhance the beauty of another.

##  **“The Truth’s Boring!”**

_“Nietzsche is critical of the very idea of objective truth. That we should think there is only one right way of considering a matter is only evidence that we have become inflexible in our thinking. Such intellectual inflexibility is a symptom of saying “no” to life, a condition that Nietzsche abhors. A healthy mind is flexible and recognizes that there are many different ways of considering a matter. There is no single truth but rather many_.”

##  **“Because You’re an Idiot”**

“Nietzsche thought that the word idiot best described Jesus. According to Walter Kaufmann, he might have been referring to the naïve protagonist ofDostoyevsky’s book _The Idiot_. “The fable of Christ as miracle–worker and redeemer is not the origin of Christianity..Jesus did not want to redeem anyone. He wanted to show how to live. His legacy was his bearing and behavior. He did not resist evildoers. He loved evildoers. Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practised was not a proper representation of Jesus’ teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done the opposite of.”

##  **Human, All Too Human: On Becoming**

JOHN: Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this.  
SHERLOCK _(not looking round)_ : Hmm?  
JOHN: Being back. Being a hero again.  
SHERLOCK: Oh, don’t be stupid.  
JOHN: You’d have to be an idiot not to see it. You _love_ it.  
SHERLOCK _(turning to face him)_ : Love what?  
JOHN: Being Sherlock Holmes.  
SHERLOCK: I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.

“Nietzsche wrote that Heraclitus "will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction”. Nietzsche developed the vision of a chaotic world in perpetual change and becoming. The state of becoming does not produce fixed entities, such as _being, subject, object, substance, thing._ Ephesus, who in the sixth century BC, said that nothing in this world is constant except change and becoming.” Sherlock, at this point, is still in a state of becoming.

##  " **Reptile!“**

_**"But wherever ye would ascend with me, O my brethren, take care lest a parasite ascend with you! A parasite: that is a reptile, a creeping, cringing reptile, that trieth to fatten on your infirm and sore places. And this is its art: it divineth where ascending souls are weary, in your trouble and dejection, in your sensitive modesty, doth it build its loathsome nest.”** _

_**“Enemy” shall ye say but not “villain,” “invalid” shall ye say but not “wretch,” “fool” shall ye say but not “sinner.”** _

_**And thou, red judge, if thou would say audibly all thou hast done in thought, then would every one cry: “Away with the nastiness and the virulent reptile!”**_ Thus Spake Zarathustra

 

##   **Why All The Pain? The Birth of Tragedy**

“Artistic creation depends on a tension between two opposing forces, which Nietzsche terms the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.”

"Apollo was the god of light, reason, harmony, balance and prophesy, while Dionysus was the god of wine, revelry, ecstatic emotion and tragedy.

Nietzsche uses this duality for discussing the artistic process which relate to either Apollo or Dionysus.   Apollo and Dionysus symbols of this duality which he further distinguishes with the terms of “dreams” and “drunkenness.”  For Nietzsche, dreams represent the realm of beautiful forms and symbols, an orderly place of light and reason. Drunkenness, on the other hand, is that state of wild passions where the boundaries between "self” and “other” dissolve.  (This may strike as odd, but Nietzsche seems to make the assumption that, when dreaming, one is aware of the fact that one is dreaming and so still able to separate appearance from reality.  I believe that he would claim those who are entirely caught up in their dreams are experiencing Dionysian ecstasy, not Apollonian beauty.)“

##  **Meet Nihilism**

” _The nihilist believes in nothing, has no loyalties and has no purpose in life. Some are left with only an impulse to destroy.“_

**EURUS** : Am I being punished?  
**MAN** _(offscreen, faintly)_ : You’ve been bad.  
**EURUS** _(almost sing-song)_ : There’s no such thing as ‘bad.’  
**MAN** _(offscreen)_ : What about good?  
**EURUS** : Good and bad are fairytales. We have evolved to attach an emotional significance to what is nothing more than the survival strategy of the pack animal. We are conditioned to invest divinity in utility. Good isn’t really good, evil isn’t really wrong, and bottoms aren’t really pretty. You are a prisoner of your own meat.  
**MAN** _(offscreen)_ : Why aren’t you?  
**EURUS** _(raising her head and looking directly into the camera as she speaks the words slowly and clearly)_ : I’m too clever.

_"Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value.”_

**Eurus is most definitely a Sherlock mirror; a Bi-Part Soul. She doesn’t even know _'if something’s beautiful or not; only right’_. Eurus is pure Nihilism. A Brain without a heart; an actual calculating machine, attempting to show that making a supposed 'morally-right decision can actually create the opposite result, so that moral codes don’t matter. She used tests, like ** [ **sherlocks-paradox** ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fsherlocks-paradox&t=ZDA3MGJiNDg4NjVhYmMyMTA2ZjM3ZWI1MTJiNTk0OTVjMDIzYzYxMyxwalVCSWt6aA%3D%3D&b=t%3A99US-dd59KEFK-T_oX2E5Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftendergingergirl.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168615135421%2Fnapoleon-nietzsche-tfp&m=1) **, tests he has been put through before. As we witness, Sherlock succeeds.**

**This is still the same journey many have pointed out, just using the Nietzschean Method to do so. Growing from a great man… _a Superman_ into a good one; flawed and very much human, with a Moral Code to match.**

_“Friedrich Nietzsche believed that the corrosive effects of nihilism would end up destroying all moral constructs, religions, and metaphysical convictions…that nihilism would be the most corrosive force in history.”_

##  **Fun Note: On Mustaches & Military Kinks**

_“Nietzsche lived with the mustache most of his adult life, and it represented for him the military life. He served briefly in the military, and always held certain admiration for military discipline. In him we get a sense that the military attitude is very important towards living a proper, fulfilling life. If you ask most people what does Nietzsche look like, what they will immediately say is: ‘oh that’s the guy with the huge mustache’. And if you ask: ‘well, what about the eyes? the nose? what about the chin? what about the hair?’ They will probably draw a blank. And Nietzsche himself points out that when you see someone with a big handsome mustache, what they see is: the mustache. It is a mask, it allowed Nietzsche in effect to hide.”_

To conclude, through the eyes of Nietzsche, the show is smashing the previous images of Sherlock Holmes, using the Philosopher’s works, in addition to Freud and Josef Breuer, to take him through a journey of self-discovery, and yes, love. Given the strong hints to a troubled childhood and suppression of feelings, the philosophies of these men, together, are employed, just as presented in _**When Nietzsche Wept**_. This meta cannot even begin to cover the full scope of Nietzshe’s works or his strong influence on the blueprint of Sherlock Holmes. His presence is found throughout canon; sometimes, in the form of other characters. I will say that Nietzche’s ideas are many, profound and important. Considering his influence on Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes, who has in turn, been so important to 21st century, in many fields, Friedrich Nietzsche should always be held in high regard. Not bad for a guy who in the good old days would have been labelled a Heretic, and burned at the stake. So maybe he’s right; we can be better.

_**“I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.** Ecco Homo_

**_(Don’t you just love some of his book titles?)_ **

_*Footnote. Further reading of canon, and discussions with fellow Sherlockians have led me to believe that when a character is injured/killed in the books, it points to Iconoclasm as one of the underlying subjects of the text. Further study is warranted._

 

 

 


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